The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was Delete. I believe that the consensus is for deletion especially given that the page contains only one sentence, the entire contents of the page are in the mainspace, and the page-creator has not edited for seven years. This discussion has been pending in one forum or another since February and we can't justify any more process concerning whether to keep or delete one duplicative sentence. This shouldn't be taken as a precedent one way or another for situations with more complicated facts. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:WGTBrett/World Golf Tour[edit]

Single unsourced sentence from November 2009 that is already at World Golf Tour. Ricky81682 (talk) 07:48, 8 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose one could quite reasonably say "delete as promotion, unsourced, by an otherwise non-contributor", but in hindsight it was a valid draft and such things should be redirected to the now existing mainspace article. The editor checking for his contribution history, and any external bookmarks, should lead to the mainspace article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:44, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why redirect it if there's no redirected history? There's be a lot of redirects to every article, which is more work if the article is ever moved or the like. Most likely, the editor would check his or her talk page first and not their contributions necessarily and see this discussion. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:10, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

why redirect?

(A1) The editor checking for his contribution history. Hiding his history is an unwelcoming thing to do to a returning editor. (The likelihood of the editor returning and doing this is really not the point)

(A2) It hides the old unwanted content from archivers, mirrors, etc, replacing the content with blank or redirect, as opposed to deletion that causes archives and mirrors to preserve the last known version;

(A3) It means it can be dealt with without using MfD.

"There's be a lot of redirects to every article, which is more work if the article is ever moved or the like." Firstly, redirects are cheap, lots of redirects to an article are of negligible cost. If the target is ever moved, a redirect will almost be certainly left behind, and, contrary to what some think, double redirects are not a problem. If, as sometimes happens, the target is to be moved without leaving a redirect, such a move requires incoming links to be checked and updated. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:54, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

His history isn't hidden. Having his article redirected somewhere when it wasn't actually used somewhere is hiding it. His talk page will inform of this discussion, and he'll have people to ask what happened. The problems are that simply blanking an article doesn't mean it stays blanked. What's to done with POV forks that people create? Or people who created versions of fictional character articles before they got merged away? If they are blanked, maybe they don't return and reinstate it but if they do, we come back and see the article again and again. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:15, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So you don't trust editors? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:52, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see it as a cost-benefit. If the editor returns and is the kind we want, they can see this discussion, see that there is an article on the subject and work there. If it's not, then they can recreate it anyways or if they ask someone about it, they'll be informed that there is a mainspace version. Either way, we're better off. If I wanted to redirect it, I could have but I didn't because WP:UP#COPIES policy isn't "blank or redirect separate versions" but they aren't appropriate at all. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:57, 9 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a WP:UP#COPIES case, why do you bring that up? WP:UP#COPIES refers to material copied from mainspace, or a retained version of deleted material.

I do not think you are weighing the cost of an MfD discussion into your equation.

The degree to which you trust editors tends to be self-fulfilling. Trustworthy editors are not tempted back if they see they are not trusted to comply with the obvious. Redirecting to the superior mainspace version is a simple message that any trustworthy and competent editor will understand. Deletion tells the old editor that there are new kids managing things now. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:06, 10 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

UP#COPIES doesn't state anything about material copied from userspace. It just says that UP isn't for pages that look like articles in mainspace. There's plenty of copies that are created separate from mainspace. If nothing is going to be used at the mainspace one, keeping it solves nothing and deleting is in line with the belief that these pages should not be here. Are you arguing that if it was copied from mainspace, it can be deleted but if I create a page that says "Mark Zuckerberg is the owner of facebook" without copying anything more, it should be kept indefinitely? -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:12, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There has been a lot of fiddling, and it never was well explained. WP:UP#COPIES is for things that are direct copies from mainspace, including of deleted content. Users unhappy with deletion often would repost (unattributed) the material just deleted, or just about to be deleted. Soemtimes with the comment "safeguarding" or similar.

Pages that "look like" mainspace articles are covered as "FAKEARTICLES". It was User:Gigs formulation. You are the first to get it confused. In one sense it doesn't matter because both are good reasons to for deletion (or blanking). Recently, I have discussed with you the creation of a CSD criterion to enable speedy deletion of direct copies. FAKEARTICLES have proved less clear cut. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:20, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have no idea what you are talking about. The section for both is titled "User pages that look like articles" and just says "Userspace ... should not be used to indefinitely host pages that look like articles, old revisions, or deleted content, or your preferred version of disputed content." Whether or not it was copied from mainspace seems irrelevant to me. If copied, then attribution is required and can be done afterwards by edit summary. To me, the question is what to do if you aren't supposed to indefinitely host this type of page. We could blank it or redirect and essentially force editors to agree to that blanking or redirecting or we just could delete it if the contents aren't used elsewhere. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 01:53, 17 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Keep WP:AGF — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.171.120.228 (talk • contribs)
Delete as not worth redirecting and the editor, if they ever come back, should be happy we cleaned up the page. Legacypac (talk) 21:38, 14 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Blank and redirect to World Golf Tour. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:49, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Delete: This is a 7 year old sentence, on a topic already covered comprehensively in mainspace, sitting untouched in userspace from an editor that hasn't contributed anything else in the same 7 years. I'm genuinely puzzled why there's a protracted discussion above regarding this. User is not likely to ever go looking for this. Chrisw80 (talk) 21:52, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not likely, but possible. The possibility outweighs the zero benefit to the project of having it deleted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Chrisw80 nailed it - the delete nothing crowd prefers useless clutter. Legacypac (talk) 18:49, 26 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:WGTBrett's userspace is not a thoroughfare, his clutter is for him to manage, subject to the pages being associated with the project. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:40, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not clutter. Clutter would be notes or references or something for a possible draft. It's an attempt at a draft when there is already an article here. It's no different than another WP:UP#COPIES situation. Also, blank and redirect are mutually exclusive. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:21, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is a duplicate not a copy. Just redirect these sorts of things to the superior mainspace article. It doesn't matter which started first. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:26, 2 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you care? This person literally wrote a sentence over six years ago. A large number of people in the meantime wrote over 20k of text about the subject, including an infobox, sources, categories, all that work and your obsession is that because that person was here first all those years ago, we must protect their work above anything anyone today tries to work on. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 00:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per Chrisw80. 103.6.159.72 (talk) 19:06, 29 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to mainspace article. This is the standard way to deal with a duplication in userspace. Please read the instructions at the top of the "Miscellany for deletion" page (the page you are looking at now): "Note that we do not delete user subpages merely to "clean up" userspace. Please only nominate pages that are problematic under our guidelines." And under WP:STALE, stale drafts should only be deleted if "problematic even if blanked," which is not true here. I understand that some editors may disagree with current practice and want to use deletion to "clean up" other people's userpages. If you disagree with current policy, please propose a change to the rules and seek consensus first instead of nominating huge batches of pages in a way that contradicts Wikipedia policy. Fagles (talk) 13:36, 6 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Admin comment: This discussion is reopened after a non-admin closure was undone per discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2016 March 31. Sandstein 13:09, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
redirect as is standard with duplication. Hobit (talk) 14:00, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.